


goldenrod and asters

by Withstarryeyes



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: (Briefly mentioned) - Freeform, Afraid Nishinoya, Angst, Anxious Azumane Asahi, Beach Rose, Boys In Love, Broken Bones, Cherry Blossoms, Coughing, DaiSuga is minor in the fic, Flirty Nishinoya, Flower Symbolism, Flowers, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Goldenrods, Hanahaki Disease, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, It's only talked about, Love, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor mentions of blood from Hanahaki, Nervous Azumane Asahi, Nishinoya feels guilty, Non-Linear Narrative, None of the main characters, Not Actually Unrequited Love, POV Nishinoya Yuu, Panic Attacks, Soft Boys, Talks of Date Tech, Talks of Nationals, asters, carnations, like only mentioned, lots of talking, soft, they deserve to be happy, they're gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:22:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28724289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Withstarryeyes/pseuds/Withstarryeyes
Summary: After practice, Noya ditches Tanaka and Ennoshita to press himself into Asahi’s side, fingers gripping the fabric of his white practice tee, and smiles up at him. “I’m gonna run by the market and get a popsicle, want to come along Asahi-san?” He’s flirting, Nishinoya is always flirting, but it’s pointed here, even more so than his advances toward Kiyoko.Or...Nishinoya falls for Asahi and hopes someone is there to catch him. Hanahaki AU
Relationships: Azumane Asahi/Nishinoya Yuu, Sawamura Daichi/Sugawara Koushi
Comments: 7
Kudos: 95





	goldenrod and asters

**Author's Note:**

> I know that Nishinoya's childhood looked different than how I portrayed it but I wrote most of this before I watched season 4, so please forgive me.

Nishinoya is a tenacious eleven-year-old when he first learns that when he falls, he falls hard. He is raised by his grandparents, his mother dead, his father absent, and he learns how to tend to a garden and play mahjong long before he learns how to do normal things, like play hopscotch or throw a rock at a window just to see if it’ll break. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to get into trouble. 

He’s trying to climb a tree to reach a small, shiny black kitten on one of the top branches. It’s stretched out, lapping at one of its paws and soaking up the sun, oblivious to Nishinoya’s tiny grasping hands and scrabbling feet. He reaches the fourth branch, hands outstretched for the next when it cracks and he hurtles down. He lands on his back, all the wind knocked out of him. The kitten flinches, startled, and leaps out of the tree onto his chest, before bounding across the lawn. He’s seeing stars and wondering what it feels like to have oxygen in his lungs when his grandmother finds him, screaming into a telephone. 

He gets put in a c-collar for a month and a half and breaks his right arm, but he’ll never forget the feeling of falling, and how freeing it had been. 

He climbs trees every week for the next two years, once he’s cleared by the doctor. Sneaking out when his grandmother can’t see him. He falls a lot, but he gets better at noticing which of the branches are too weak, which ones will snap under pressure. 

In his second year, he misses Asahi’s weaknesses. He can’t save all of the balls from Date Tech. He doesn’t have enough words to soothe. He watches helplessly as Asahi hits and hits and hits, and shakes himself apart like a washer with loose screws. When Asahi quits the team, Nishinoya does too, disappointed in himself for thinking that he could scramble onto Asahi’s shoulders and lead them both into battle. He doesn’t think about that now--can’t think about that. How easy it was to let Asahi slip through the cracks, how it was him who had failed to smooth the cracks over in the first place. 

* * *

When Nishinoya first joins the team, he meets a shy, wild ace and instantly thinks of a lush forest full of goldenrod and asters. He’s all slim lines and bashful energy. At their first practice, Nishinoya digs up one of his serves and Asahi bows at him, head almost skimming the floor. “Sorry!” He shouts to the team as a whole. 

“You’ve got some power, Asahi-san!” Noya smiles up at him, pleased when Asahi flushes from the tip of his ears to the top of his chest. His arms are stinging from the ball, but he’d gotten it up, centered too, arching over where a setter would be in a real game. He practices serve receives from Ennoshita for the rest of practice. Out of the corner of his eye, Asahi has moved on to spikes, Suga giving him praise as he sets for him. Nishinoya wonders what it would take for Asahi to let him into his corner, to let him hold him up. 

After practice, Noya ditches Tanaka and Ennoshita to press himself into Asahi’s side, fingers gripping the fabric of his white practice tee, and smiles up at him. “I’m gonna run by the market and get a popsicle, want to come along Asahi-san?” He’s flirting, Nishinoya is always flirting, but it’s pointed here, even more so than his advances toward Kiyoko. He pines for Kiyoko, but he wants Asahi. They’re heat both the same, but Kiyoko is the humidity of a summer day and Asahi is the concentrated fire of a stove burner, licking the bottom of a pot. 

Asahi looks to Suga and Daichi, at once on edge and concerned of coming off as impolite. Nishinoya is aware of the effect he has on people. His intensity, what makes him a good libero and a better teammate, is daunting outside of a game. “Or I could just walk you home? I was hoping to talk to you about how you approach blockers so I know how to cover your spikes.” He changes tactics, breezily shifting into a more comfortable zone. 

It’s not a commitment to walk together, after all everyone here is leaving. Asahi agrees, and they change. Nishinoya tries to pretend like he doesn’t notice the broad expanse of Asahi’s back. The threaded muscles there, corded and thick. Built from years of power and play. He wants to run his fingers in the grooves, wants to follow the curve of Asahi’s spine down, explore him. He’s always fallen fast and hard. A comet streaking across a midnight sky, but there’s something different about Asahi. He’s not a challenge, Nishinoya realizes when they’re halfway to Asahi’s house. He’s talking about Date Tech, their intimidating Iron Wall. He’s approachable, kind, and talkative, if Nishinoya can get him alone. He’s not bothered by Nishinoya’s directness, on the contrary, Nishinoya gets the idea that Asahi prefers people who are forces, people who draw him out of his shell. 

Nishinoya can do that, be that, but he has to find a way to work around it, to break down the instilled manners that he knows Asahi harbors. There’s only a year between them, but that year is enough to draw the distinction between senpai and kouhai, and Nishinoya is not sure he’ll be able to blur that line, but he’s willing to try with enough time. 

* * *

A week before Asahi’s graduation, Nishinoya finds him having a panic attack in the courtyard. The cherry trees have blossomed, tiny flowers shedding like rainwater to stick on the paths and people’s clothes. Asahi has a full bloom in his hair, nestled by the crook of his ear. Nishinoya almost misses him completely, on his way to volleyball practice, thinking about the school break ahead of him. It’s a particularly hard wheeze from Asahi that catches his attention and then Nishinoya is unshouldering his bag and kneeling in front of the taller man, hands on his shoulders. 

“Asahi?” His eyes don’t move, trapped and glazed over on a single pinpoint, right where Nishinoya has crammed his knee. “Hey big guy, it’s okay, you’ve got me.” He shimmies behind Asahi, who is far too pliant in his hands, and pulls so Asahi’s back is a stripe of warmth across his chest. He hooks his fingers together, right over Asahi’s heart, and squeezes lightly in tune with his own pulse, breathing deeply. 

Slowly Asahi comes together. After Asahi eats a piece of hard candy Nishinoya fished out of a pocket of his bag-- “It’ll get your blood sugar up.”--he sighs, and shuts his eyes, 

“It’s just so soon. I thought I had more time,” Asahi says, swishing the lemon candy around his mouth. 

Nishinoya stops packing up his bag. _Time, he’d thought he’d had more time_. “Time for what?” His voice is thin, barely there, but Asahi doesn’t notice. Nishinoya helps Asahi stand.

“I don’t know,” Asahi says. “Aren’t there things you’re supposed to do before you graduate?” When Asahi’s brown eyes meet Nishinoyas, he feels the entire weight of his crush fall on him. 

For the first time since the start of his second year, Nishinoya skips volleyball practice to walk Asahi home, silent the whole way there. 

His grandfather is out gardening when he gets home, pruning the roses and hyacinths, hands working around thorns and thick stems. Nishinoya ignores him, walking to his room on autopilot. There’s something unfurling in his chest, sticking its spiked paws out to ensnare his ribcage. Time, he thinks, then laughs hysterically. How could he have lost track of it?

Later that night, in the shower, Nishinoya begins hacking, and brings up a single bunch of goldenrod, metallic in the water and washed pink around the edges by Nishinoya’s blood. He curls his palm with the bud inside and brings it to his chest, rests back so that his head hits the shower wall, water falling into his nostrils and threatening to drown him. He doesn’t move until the water snakes its way into his throat and he pitches forward, wheezing and clutching at the walls to stay upright. 

He doesn’t sleep, fiddling the small flower in between his fingers instead and staring at the ceiling. It’s only the arrival of the sun--a smear of pink and aster purple--that prompts him to get up, get ready. He’s going to have to explain to Ennoshita why he missed practice yesterday and he grimaces, wracking his tired brain for an excuse. Ennoshita may not be Daichi, but he still cared about the team, and he was new to leading. 

The walk is grueling, slow and torturous, a little too cold. He almost doses off halfway there when he bends down to tie his shoe, slumping to the side and waking up when his cheek hits the dirt. He sighs, standing. A wave of vertigo hit him all at once. He could skip practice again, could keep skipping it, all the way through summer break and out the other side of the year. But he thinks to training camp, to playing, to the feeling of the ball hitting his arms and the way it arcs gracefully into the air when he does well, and he can’t. He can’t give it up, even if it’s the biggest risk for him getting caught, love-sick and pining after a senpai that’s leaving him.

* * *

When Nishinoya is thirteen, he loses his grandmother. The funeral is a lush forest, blooms plucked from their garden outback. On the top of the casket is a bouquet of lavender, wrapped in a beige twine. He carries a yellow rose, twists it between his fingers over and over, as he follows his Grandfather down the cemetery to where she will be buried. 

It’s an ache he doesn’t think he’ll ever quite be able to soothe. It pulses through the feelings he has for his parents, and the feelings he’s had for anyone he’s ever met, the feeling that life should never end. 

As she’s lifted into the ground, as she settles beneath his feet, he vows to never lose anyone again, if he can help it. 

* * *

They go to _nationals_. They make it, just a few months shy of the third year leaving, and it’s glorious and wonderful and _so so good_. Intense too, Nishinoya knows, after watching Asahi cram as many thoughts into his head as he can before he serves, before he spikes, before he blocks. Nishinoya trails after him, picking up the broken letters as they shatter and slip out of Asahi’s ears onto the court. He tries to press his own thoughts into Asahi’s head, tries to fill it so fast that Asahi can’t fill it himself. 

It’s not enough, can’t be enough, but they make it through the first game anyway. Nishinoya has come a long way from the indestructible libero he thought himself to be. He’s not. Ushijima’s left-handed serves were enough to show him that. But he manages, and he forgives himself for flubbing a few of the float serve receives. He understands Asahi more after, gets the fear that comes with a game, with not having your body do what you want it to. 

When it’s all said and done, and they’re sleeping in the tiny inn before their Nekoma game, Nishinoya bundles up next to Asahi, his futon pressed into the creases of Asahi’s 

“Is that how you feel every game?” He asks. Asahi’s hair is down, spread out around his face like a crown. He’s covered up to his chin with his blankets, only his face and soft hair peeking out. 

Nishinoya is sitting up, facing the window, curled in on himself. His arms ache, red and bruised from the last few days. 

“What?” Asahi croaks, inches away from sleep. 

Nishinoya shuts his eyes, mentally replaying the game against the Miya twins, how he’d been targeted so ruthlessly, how he’d been a weakness. “When I couldn’t dig up Miya Atsumu’s serves, I felt like I shouldn’t be on the court. What’s the point of a libero who can’t defend?” 

Asahi is looking at him. Nishinoya pointedly doesn’t meet his gaze, instead looking out over the city. He counts the stars in the sky, resting his chin against his forearm. He shivers, cold in his t-shirt and shorts but unwilling to get a sweatshirt. “Is that how you feel during a game when you get shut out?”

Something warm and smelling like Asahi--citrus and sea salt-- settles itself over his shoulders. Asahi’s skin brushes against Nishinoya’s neck and he feels goose pimples erupt across his body. He slips into the sweatshirt wordlessly. 

“Yeah,” Asahi says, then, “But I feel it sorta all the time.”

Nishinoya hums, “I’m sorry.”

Asahi huffs out a laugh, “I’m not.”

He finally looks over then. Asahi is still cocooned in the blanket but he’s back to sitting, a full head taller than Nishinoya. His brown eyes are soft and warm. “What does that mean?”

Asahi smiles, conspiratorial, “What better way to know if your team has your back than to always be the one needing a pep talk?” 

It works, Nishinoya begins to smile, just a fraction, and all of the tension melts out of Asahi’s shoulders. “I guess you’re right,” he says. “You know when I met you, I wondered if I’d ever be allowed to be one of the people standing in your corner. I wasn’t sure I’d ever gain your trust that way, the way that Suga and Daichi already had.”

Asahi hums, rocking back to lean against his hands. The blanket slips revealing a flash of bare skin, the start of Asahi’s collar bone above his sleep shirt. “That’s kinda amazing,” he says.

“Yes, well.” Nishinoya grins. “I’m kinda amazing.”

Laughter, a pillow launched at Nishinoya’s head. “Go to sleep,” Asahi says, and they do. 

* * *

He’s late for practice in the morning, overslept his alarm after spending half the night thinking about the goldenrod, thinking about Asahi. He wonders how long he could go on like this, coughing up petals and stems, ripping up his inside with thorns. He wonders if he’s strong enough to tell Asahi, to make this end. He’s had two years already, hasn’t he? And he hasn’t done it yet. 

He’s still got his white t-shirt pulled over his face, running into the gym with his abdomen exposed and half-blind, when he hears Asahi’s voice rumble out through the gym. He pulls his shirt down hurriedly, seeking out Asahi who is standing by Daichi and Suga. 

Daichi is leaning over to speak in Ennoshita’s ear. Suga rocks up and down on his toes, watching Kageyama set to a spiking Hinata. 

Asahi catches his gaze, giving him a small smile that cuts through Nishinoya like an arrow. He clutches the fabric of his top, feeling something crawling its way up his throat. They’re not in practice clothes or even their usual uniforms. They’re in their graduation outfits and the reminder of what Nishinoya is so afraid of--of how much time he has left, has him coughing into a palm, harsh enough to send him to his knees. 

The hacks are ruthless, unending, leaving Nishinoya lightheaded. He blinks his eyes open to blood dripping down his chin. Cradled in his hand is a small cherry blossom bud, he curls his fingers around it just as Asahi reaches him, large palm fitting onto his shoulder. 

“Wha--is that blood?” Asahi asks, turning to shout at Daichi, “Nishinoya’s coughing up blood.”

The whole practice comes to a halt then. His throat feels like he’s tried to eat a sea urchin whole, but he manages to rasp out, “I’m fine, I bit my tongue.”

“How’d you bite your tongue?” Asahi is completely unhinged at this point, voice high and thin. Coach Ukai yells over the din, sending the boys back to practice, before meandering over to the three of them, Daichi having come to Asahi’s calls. 

“I tripped.” He’s never been a good liar, and Asahi’s eyes narrow. Nishinoya feels pinned here, trapped under Asahi’s scrutiny. His throat gives a final, feeble twinge as if to warn him that this will happen again. 

“You were coughing.” The words are almost wounded coming out of Asahi’s mouth. 

There’s nothing for Nishinoya to say. Wet and warm in the palm of his hand, the cherry blossom feels not unlike a tiny heart. 

“Kid, you’ve gotta get checked out before I let you back into practice. Sawamura, Azumane, can you take him to the infirmary?” Ukai says. It causes Asahi to drop his gaze. 

Daichi takes him by the arm, hauls him up. Nishinoya lets him. 

* * *

“Where do you think you’ll go?” Nishinoya asks, the summer after his first year at Karasuno. Asahi is laying on his back next to him in the grass, the two of them staring up at the sky. 

Daichi and Suga are around, somewhere. Nishinoya thinks he recalls them offering to get ice cream, he can’t really remember. Lying here, this close to Asahi, he can feel the man’s warmth. If he inched his hand just a little to the right, he could entwine their pinkies. 

“I’m not going anywhere?” Asahi says. It draws a laugh out of Nishinoya, who props himself onto one elbow. 

“I didn’t mean, like, right now,” he says. Asahi blushes all the way down to his chest. 

“How was I supposed to know?”

“I meant after graduation. You’re a third-year now.”

Asahi sits up, little pieces of grass entwined in his hair. Before he can stop himself, Nishinoya leans over and plucks out a strand of green, blinking down, surprised, as the green bleeds into the yellow open-face of a buttercup. “Huh,” he says, twirling it around his fingers, all shame forgotten.

Asahi stares at him in embarrassment, pushing his own fingers through his hair. Eventually, Nishinoya returns his gaze to Asahi, smiling shyly. “Sorry, got carried away.”

Looking a little strangled, Asahi shakes his head, “It’s fine, Yuu. As for after graduation, I’m not sure.”

“Think you’ll stay in Miyagi?” He’s having such a good time, Nishinoya can’t help the brightness of the question, the inherent hope that lies in it being spoken. 

Which is why Nishinoya sorta feels like the sun’s been put out when Asahi looks to the sky and says, “No, I don’t think so.”

* * *

Asahi walks him to the nurse. The weight of the cherry blossom bud is only increasing, growing sweaty and warm in his palm. Nishinoya opens his mouth to speak three separate times before catching sight of Asahi’s face and falling silent. He steps a little closer, close enough that his hand brushes the back of Asahi’s. 

Asahi doesn’t even flinch, as lost in thought as he is. 

“Asahi--” Nishinoya starts, when Daichi bumps his shoulder into his. 

“Noya,” his voice is soft, but the reprimand is clear. Asahi needs to figure out whatever he’s thinking of on his own. 

He swallows past the lump in his throat, closing his eyes to reset. “Daichi, I-”

“I know,” he says. Nishinoya feels a blush creep up his throat to settle in the hollows of his cheek. 

“Does everyone?”

Daichi tips his head in a questioning motion. “No, but enough.”

Outside, cherry blossom buds have covered the ground like snow, little pink buds burying the ground they lay upon. “And you don’t mind?”

“Do you mind me and Suga?”

“You and Suga?” Asahi has moved on ahead of them, staring at the ground as he walks. He startles a first year as he ambles past, mumbling to himself with his head tucked toward his chest. Nishinoya wants to grab onto him, wants to pull him back. But he’s moving forward and maybe, maybe Nishinoya should respect that. 

“Got together first year. Hasn’t been easy keeping it from the team but I’d like to think if it did come out, it’d be all right.”

“Why are you telling me this?” His chest gives a preemptive twinge, a little knock against his ribs before Nishinoya falls to his knees, hacking. It’s worse this time, blood spilling out to coat his lips in a light wash, hands nested in his shirt as he begs for air. It leaves him light-headed, ears ringing and vision whited out until something slick and warm falls out. When his vision comes back, Nishinoya can see that Asahi is so far ahead he hasn’t noticed Nishinoya on the ground. The same ground where, at Nishinoya’s trembling knees, lays a single, pink carnation. 

Somebody is rubbing Nishinoya’s back in soothing circles. It must belong to Daichi because it’s his voice he hears in his ear when the person behind him dips down and whispers, “You know Suga had Hanahaki?”

“No,” Nishinoya says. His lips taste like blood. “But I have a feeling I know why you’re telling me.”

Asahi has turned around, eyes widening at the state Nishinoya’s in. Lightning quick, Daichi grasps the Carnation and shoves it in the inner pocket of Nishinoya’s uniform. A pleasant warmth against his side. 

* * *

After his grandmother’s funeral, his grandfather took Nishinoya to the sea. It was already evening, the sky a blend of charcoal and navy. His grandfather had taken a rock and chucked it out into the waves, watching as it sank almost immediately from sight. 

He’d been afraid then, afraid that everything was going to change. It did, but Nishinoya wouldn’t notice it at first, wouldn’t catch on all the ways his grandfather was hiding his grief. 

He doesn’t remember much from that day, but he remembers that moment that his grandfather turned around. The feeling of a rock being dropped in his hand, cool and heavy in his hand. “Hold onto that for me?” His grandfather asked. Nishinoya complied.

They walked to the edge of the beach, where the small, hardy plants bloomed in the nutrient weak sand. His grandfather had kneeled by one plant, cupping a thick, fuchsia bud. 

Nishinoya turned the rock over and over in his hand, memorizing the crevices of it like it mattered, as his grandfather began to tell him about the beach rose, about what it meant. 

In hindsight, Nishinoya thinks he did this to keep Nishinoya from seeing him cry. But he wanted to believe it was because he thought he could cultivate some of his grandmother in Nishinoya. 

He still has that rock, resting on his nightstand next to a photo of his grandmother. Sometimes he slips it into his bag at the start of the day without really knowing why. 

* * *

Nishinoya stops Asahi right as they reach the nurse’s office. Asahi’s eyes are swimming with concern and something warm, light amber in the center of his pupil, that Nishinoya can’t, or maybe won’t place. He fiddles with his fingers on his closed hand. Presses into the nail beds, traces his knuckles. 

“Um,” he starts, right as Asahi says, “So.”

He laughs awkwardly, the end of it a little bitter. His fingernails are atrocious, he thinks, staring down at them, bitten to the quick and bruised from volleyballs and flying digs. 

“You go first,” Asahi starts, eventually, after they’ve hovered outside of the office for long enough. 

Nishinoya makes his first mistake then, glancing up into Asahi’s face. He looks tired, worn like Nishinoya has personally reached into his soul and taken out ten years of life. There are a few strands of hair falling out of his usually neat bun, long and lonely as they take residence on the crests of Asahi’s shoulders. “I-” Nishinoya starts, stops, looks at his hands, looks up. 

“You can tell me anything,” Asahi says, voice wobbling. 

That’s when he makes his second mistake because he opens his hands to press them into his eyes, and a small bud flutters out, crushed but unmistakable as it falls to land by Nishinoya’s shoe. He freezes, blinking down at the small pink flower, wishing he could just slide it out of view before Asahi sees. But he already has, crouching down with his insurmountable height to grab the tiny object. Nishinoya can see when its identity lands because Asahi’s eyes go wide and Nishinoya’s throat closes. 

“Nishinoya,” Asahi starts, quietly, gently, but Nishinoya can’t hear it over the sound of his own heart beating wildly in his ears. 

“It’s not what you think,” he says, vision going spotty. Asahi clings to him, standing so fast that his bun slips even lower, more hair emptying itself around Asahi’s face. “It’s not, It’s um, It’s um, uhhh.” His vocabulary is failing him. Dropping out like a ball out of bounds. Did he ever even know how to speak Japanese? He squeezes his eyes shut, alarmed to feel wetness against his lashes, then, even more, when a harsh sob escapes his mouth. 

Asahi wraps an arm around his shoulder, begins to drag him toward a side door. “We should talk,” Asahi says and Nishinoya feels the rest of his limited stock of calm float away. “‘Cause I think this is exactly what I think it is.”

They end up in the courtyard, sitting under the cherry blossom tree. It’s so funny that Nishinoya wants to laugh, but it feels like someone snipped all the muscles around his mouth. 

Asahi is sitting pressed up against him, a long line of shoulder and torso and thigh. He keeps thinking that he needs to say something, but his voice isn’t working and his hands are shaking and he’s panicking. Asahi lays a warm palm over one of his closed fists, and Nishinoya watches the blood flood back into the pale skin as he stops clenching it so hard. 

He clears his throat, clears it again, stares up at the sky through the tree branches. 

“I love you,” three words, three words that Nishinoya has been thinking for two agonizing years but hasn’t had to courage to say. It takes a moment for his exhausted brain to realize that the words have been spoken but Nishinoya hadn’t opened his mouth. “I love you, Yuu, I think I always have.”

“You can’t,” Nishinoya squeaks out, searching the planes of Asahi’s face for any sign that he’s joking. Asahi doesn’t joke, or really, rarely does, and it’s often with an undercurrent of panic, but Nishinoya cannot fathom a time that Asahi would say those words to him and not have them be teasing. “You can’t! There’s no way.”

“Well I do?” Asahi says, nose scrunching up. His eyebrows are meeting in the center of his forehead. Nishinoya feels his chin begin to crumple. 

“You don’t have to say it if you don’t feel it.” He feels like someone has taken the string wrapped around his spine and tugged, unraveled all his muscles and left him as a pile of bones. His chest aches, and he presses his knuckles where his sternum is, digging into the divot. “Please don’t say it if you don’t mean it. I can’t--” 

His hands are wrapped in something warm, and then Nishinoya is being tugged forward, yanked off his seat. He lands somewhere warm and sturdy. It’s Asahi’s lap, Nishinoya notes, before Asahi’s lips go plunging onto his. 

It’s not overly pleasant, a lot of teeth and pressure and warmth. For the first thirty seconds Nishinoya doesn’t move, stiff in Asahi’s arms. It’s only when Asahi tries to pull away does Nishinoya grab onto him, his small hands over Asahi’s shoulders, and begin to move. He laps at Asahi’s lips, shifts so he’s straddling Asahi’s lap. 

They pull apart and Nishinoya’s face isn’t any less wet. He’s crying, almost sobbing. Asahi is the calm one for once, looking down at him with such adoration that Nishinoya can’t believe this isn’t a dream. “When were you going to tell me?” He asks. 

Nishinoya pants, rubbing a hand through Asahi’s silky hair where it’s fallen loose and rests against his shoulder. “I meant to before you graduated. And then everything went so fast and I...I got scared.”

The resulting grin on Asahi’s face is shy, sheepish. “You, afraid?”

He punches Asahi in the chest, “Hey! You’re not the only one who gets to be scared. This was important to me.” 

That sobers both of them. Asahi is running his fingers up and down Nishinoya’s spine, leaving tingles that spread through each of Nishinoya’s vertebrae. “It’s important to me too.” He licks his lips, “You’re important to me, Yuu.”

He feels his face go soft, his gaze dropping back down to Asahi’s mouth. It’s in the tiny space between Asahi’s lips and his own that he whispers, “I’m so happy that you think so,” before he closes the gap. 

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhh!! It's finally done. I've always wanted to write an Asanoya fic but they're really hard characters to get right. I know the hanahaki is resolved quickly but Nishinoya is someone who cannot keep a secret for the life of him. Plus I really wanted Asahi to be the one to confess. I hope you liked this. Please let me know if I kept Asahi and Noya mainly in character! If you want other fics like this please leave a comment. 
> 
> Best,  
> C


End file.
